The Temptation of the Idler (The Dream of the Doctor), ca. 1498

About the Work

A man in a fur-lined housecoat has settled in comfortably by the warm oven and fallen asleep. He embodies the vice of idleness. A devil blows a further vice—a lustful dream—into his ear with a bellows. The naked Venus and Cupid, heathen deities of love, appear to the sleeper. Cupid’s stilts are a symbol of moral instability. The engraving combines Christian conceptions of morality with a secular interest in the more permissive themes of the ancient world.